On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Jan Engelhardt wrote:>> I really appreciate the lot of -rcs, especially if there are so many > intrusive changes/regressions. Like Andrew, I have a feeling that it > gets buggier, but at least, it seems to be made up every ... two > releases.

I wouldn't say that, but yes, there is at least *some* tendency to not merge scary stuff after a painful release.

For example, I can certainly say that after 2.6.21, I'm likely to be very unhappy merging something that isn't "obviously safe". I knew the timer changes were potentially painful, I just hadn't realized just *how* painful they would be (we had some SATA/IDE changes too, of course, it's not all just about the timers, those just ended up being more noticeable to me than some of the other things were).

> About 2.6.21 - will see, rc has been to my liking.

I actually hope that 2.6.21 isn't even all that bad, despite all the worries about it. And I may be complaining about the problems the timers caused, but it was definitely something that was not only worth it, it was overdue - and those NO_HZ issues had been brewing literally for years. So considering issues like that, I think we're actually doing fairly well.

One of the bigger issues is that I think -mm (and I'm pretty sure Andrew will agree with me on this) has really had a rather spotty history. It's been unstable enough at times that I suspect people have largely stopped testing it, with just the most die-hard testers running -mm.

So -mm is still very useful just because *Andrew* tests it, and finds all kinds of issues with it, but I literally suspect that Andrew himself is personally a big part of that, which is kind of wasteful - we should be able to spread out the pain more. Andrew is also too damn polite when something goes wrong ;)

So we should have somebody like Christoph running -mm, and when things break, we'll just sic Christoph on whoever broke it, and teach people proper fear and respect! As it is, I think people tend to send things to -mm a bit *too* eagerly, because there is no downside - Andrew is a "cheap date" testing-wise, and always puts out ;)